Yesterday 52 PSU-AAUP members showed up in person and online for the first day of bargaining. Due to so many members showing up, there was movement on expanding around reduced tuition contract language. There is some inconsistency between the PSU policy and the contract, especially with regard to whether employees who have been laid off can continue to use the benefit.
Help continue the momentum through RSVPing and showing up for bargaining:
Today, Thursday, July 25 -- (8:30am-4:30pm)
RMNC 316 (Mt. Rainier room)
You may join for the whole day or any time(s) you are able
Remote Observers:
At the outset of today’s session, we had to resolve the matter of remote observers. The AAUP bargaining team wanted to use our own Zoom meeting, where members could observe and have the ability to simultaneously ask questions and make comments, while the administration team could have their own zoom meeting as well.
Our team felt this was the simplest and most accessible option, however the administration team favored having both teams on the same Zoom meeting, with each team having a separate platform for questions and comments. While the administration team expressed their interests in using a shared platform, our team was not clear why it was such an important issue for them.
In the end, we agreed to use a webinar style Zoom meeting, and each team can choose what method they want to use for collecting questions and comments.
Find the Zoom link in the member email from today (July 25).
Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Next the Administration proposed changing Article 38, which requires that employees be notified of Employee Assistance Program (EAP) information. This is not a highly-controversial article, so it was hoped it could be dispensed with fairly easily. We ended up having quite a bit of conversation about changing the language in a way that would update how such information is made available. For example, the contract requires PSU to distribute EAP brochures to all employees on an annual basis. It makes more sense to rely on PSU’s website, which has much more comprehensive information.
In the end we came up with some simple language changes that left the basic meaning intact, but provided a more specific sense of how the information would be available.
See you all in bargaining today!